[USFK Forums] Tensions Rise Over NK's Press Censorship [Korea Times]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Tensions Rise Over NK’s Press Censorship

Joint Press Corps & Seo Dong-shin, Staff Reporter

MT. KUMGANG, North Korea _ Tensions have mounted between the North Korean authorities and South Korean joint press corps covering the family reunion events here Tuesday over what South Korean journalists consider as the communist country's censorship of the press.

The friction first began Monday, when some North Korean officials who were present at the reunion sessions protested South Korean broadcast journalists' description of a North Korean as an ``abductee.''

Cheon Moon-seok, a 76-year-old former South Korean fisherman who is believed to have been kidnapped to the North while aboard a fishing boat near the West Sea border in 1969, was reunited with Seo Soon-ae, 69, his wife from the South.

A group of 99 South Koreans and their accompanying family members are participating in the three-day reunion sessions with their long-lost family members residing in the North, from whom they were separated during and after the 1950-1953 Korean War.

The second group of South Koreans is scheduled to leave for the scenic mountain resort in the North for another set of three-day reunions on Thursday.

When journalists from SBS and MBC, two major broadcasting networks of the South, recorded a tape for news programs to be aired in the South, describing Cheon as an ``abductee to North Korea,'' the North Korean officials blocked the tape from being sent to the South, according to reports. The broadcasting stations had to do the audio-dubbing work on the tape in Seoul separately.

The discord was exacerbated on Tuesday as the North demanded that journalists of the two broadcasting stations stay away from reunion sessions.

In protest, members of the joint press corps refused to report on the events altogether, which caused a delay in the second session of reunions scheduled in the morning.

It is not the first time for North Korean officials, who attend the family reunion sessions for monitoring activities, to express anger at the South Korean description of ``abductees.''

During the last round of reunions last November, similar friction formed concerning the word ``abduction.'' Unable to protest the North's hindering reports because of not wanting to disrupt reunion sessions, the joint press corps at that time issued a statement expressing regret upon returning to Seoul.

Pyongyang has flatly denied having kidnapped any South Koreans during and after the war. But the South Korean government estimates that some 480 South Koreans abducted after the war are still held in the North.

The number of those abducted during the war is thought to be tens of thousands, but no official date exists.

South Korea has hoped the North would continue to show signs of softening its stance on the humanitarian issue after Red Crosses of the two Koreas reached an agreement in February.

The year began as the two sides ``undertook to discuss and resolve the issue of confirming the fate of people, whose fate became unknown around and after the Korean War, within the framework of the separated families issue.''

But as the North has began to take issue with the expression of ``abductee'' in South Korean media reports in recent rounds of family reunion sessions, concerns are growing over possible retrogression on the related issues.


saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr

03-21-2006 17:32